Proof
by nonotthatone
Summary: Lex as scientist and Clark as reporter, reimagined. Nothing important, just fluff and Chemistry homework.


Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.

A/N: Inspired by The Calling's song "Unstoppable." (God bless whoever compiled the complete Smallville playlist on bittorrent.)

Proof

As Lex took in the scattered pile of books and papers on the table between them, he found it ironic that Clark should be studying Chemistry. While there was no denying the chemistry he himself felt, he tended to think of Clark more in terms of Physics. It helped that Newton's laws referred to _bodies_; however innocently it had been intended, Lex was helpless but to smile and interpret the words literally. Bodies, motion, force … attraction …

Lex himself had not done particularly well in Physics at Excelsior. He'd turned up his nose at the time and scoffed that it had no practical application in the future he intended to build for himself. Had he known then that his future held Clark in store, he might have paid better attention. His analytical side would certainly have enjoyed the measurements, the calculations, the interpretation and subversion of theorems to explain the pull that Clark Kent exerted upon all his senses.

It was possible it was just gravity, the universal attraction between all objects with mass. But that seemed too mundane, and Lex was sure that what existed between him and Clark was far beyond ordinary.

It had been there since the first moment, the aura of potential that hung around them like a curtain, keeping the rest of the world out, lending a sensation of significance to everything they did together. Lex was a pragmatist; he'd been forced from an early age to recognize the weakness of emotions and their tendency to deceive. So it was not in character for him to look into the eyes of another person and be so instantly transported into fantastic landscapes of hope. Nor was it normal for him to take someone so completely into his heart.

But when he was with Clark, Lex barely recognized himself. The tight control he exerted over every other facet of his life was completely absent here. It was as if forces far beyond them both were at work – bringing them together, holding them in thrall.

The things he'd said to Clark at the beginning … sometimes he still couldn't believe he'd actually said them. It was so unlike him to be so free, to talk of friendship and future with language that, to a perfect stranger, must sound more than just a little crazy. But Clark had listened, and smiled at him as though Lex's bizarre speeches were completely normal to him – as if he were speaking of something that Clark too could sense.

Everyone else in Smallville could stare if they wanted to. Lex didn't need or even expect them to understand. Only Clark's understanding mattered; and Lex believed he had it. It was in every private joke they shared, every sly eyebrow and furtive glance … even in Clark's goofy grin as he caught Lex watching him study.

"What are you staring at me for?" he asked teasingly. "Is there something hanging out of my nose?"

If it was true that attraction only increased as two bodies grew closer, Lex was living proof; it was becoming harder and harder not to stare. It had started as a vague fancy, something that took him pleasantly by surprise and made him watch admiringly as Clark turned to leave a room. Soon it had grown beyond a daydream, become a fantasy that began with Clark hefting crates of vegetables out of the pickup and expanded to fill many dull boardroom hours. But as their friendship deepened – as it seemed to with every week and month that passed – this too was becoming far more serious. It still brought a sly smile to Lex's lips; but he knew it was no longer a game he was playing. It was no longer just attraction, just infatuation.

This was desire: hot, driving, visceral. It now infused every word, every movement Lex made in Clark's presence. It consumed his waking thoughts and was slowly, surely turning him into a one-track mind: where Clark was at this moment, what he was doing, how Lex might contrive to see him again.

It struck him that this must be how an addict lives, if you could call the agonizing moments from fix to fix _living_.

"Sorry," Lex smiled, shaking his head to play off his distraction. He gestured vaguely towards his sleek laptop and the spreadsheet he was pretending to work on. "I was trying to figure out how to maximize the quarterly dividend."

Clark just lifted his eyebrows in response. "Wow. And I thought chemistry was boring."

"I don't know how you can say that. Don't things …" Lex waved his graceful fingers vaguely through the air. "… explode?"

Clark laughed. "If you're me, only when they're not supposed to."

"I don't envy your lab partner," Lex teased. He was lying, of course. His mind was at that very moment conjuring an image of Clark in a silly plastic apron and safety glasses, and growing intensely jealous of anyone who got to see him like that. He wondered, if he bought Smallville High a new science center, if he could time it right to deliver the check during Clark's lab period …

Clark had smiled and turned back to his books; Lex tapped the spacebar meditatively and wondered for the thousandth time what he thought he was doing. On the one hand, it was ridiculous for Lex Luthor to be watching and wanting from afar. This was not his _modus operandi _and he was almost embarrassed by his own inaction. And to take it a step further – to let himself fall deeper and deeper into Clark with each passing day, to continue to fan these flames even while denying them an outlet – Lex knew he was pushing himself to a very dangerous extreme.

It was no longer a question of if, but when, he would succumb. Even he had a limit and at some point he would lose his self-control.

But on the other hand, the way he felt for Clark was not like any emotion Lex had felt before. He was not unschooled in passion: jealousy, rage, obsession lay on the darker side of his will and drive for success and power. He was no stranger to desire or its mastery. What he was unused to was caring so much for someone.

The fear of losing Clark was what stayed the hands that ached to touch him.

And yet … Lex could not help but remember that he had done this once before. He had already spoken to Clark of greatness, of what they could and should be to one another; and Clark had not turned away. In fact, Clark had taken to spending time with Lex, lingering side-by-side with him at the hayloft door or passing an evening in his library, even if it was only to do Chemistry homework.

Lex had already said enough to Clark to make him think him the most extreme sort of idiot. And Clark had responded by making him his best friend.

Lex already knew that he and Clark were destined to be partners in history. With just a few words – just a night together or a moment to themselves – they could well transform even their own extraordinary potential. Maybe it could be just that simple after all: to accept Physics and its laws. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest until acted upon by an outside force … just a little push could be enough to set it all into motion.

And then they would be unstoppable.

-

Clark had yet to come up with a clever headline, but the story was starting to write itself.

Pete had asked him once what exactly he and Lex did when they hung out together. Of course he'd struggled to explain to Pete, whose heart and soul and layup Clark knew inside-out after all these years, how the age of a friendship did not necessarily dictate its intimacy. Clark shared himself with Pete – as much as he could, anyway – but the easy comfort between them couldn't compare with the excitement he felt when he was with Lex.

While Pete accepted him without question, Lex made him feel wanted. And not just because he saw him as a mystery to solve – though Clark didn't fool himself there. He knew Lex could tell he had a secret; he knew Lex was dying to be told. But he also knew there was more to Lex's attention than an enquiring mind. Lex had recognized something in him that made him want to draw Clark closer; in every word it rang like an unspoken invitation. And even from a person without Lex's tremendous personal magnetism, the promise of a friendship the likes of which the world had never seen would be hard to resist.

He hadn't been able to tell Pete this; it sounded, he admitted to himself, pretty corny. But he'd thought Chloe would be more likely to understand, and so when she'd asked him a similar question, he'd tried to explain it to her. It didn't come out sounding quite as eloquent and enticing as it did inside his own head, though.

When he'd trailed off, frustrated, Chloe had looked at him with that strange expression she sometimes wore – the one that was half know-it-all and the other half sad – and asked if it had ever occurred to him what Lex really wanted from him. And then she'd launched into a diatribe about how it was obvious that Lex envied Clark, how even someone as rich and privileged as a Luthor couldn't buy decency and wholesomeness and love. "Because that's what being a Kent is," she'd said in that certain tone of hers, her mouth set in an almost grim line. "And that's what Lex wants. He doesn't want to be your _friend_, Clark … he wants to be _you_."

Clark had laughed her off with a joke about Tina Greer being the only identity thief on the Wall of Weird; but her question had stuck with him. Not the one she'd asked – not the point she'd tried to make about envy and essentials and what money couldn't buy – but the possibility she'd asked him to consider, the one he never really had before.

He found himself wondering if it was possible that Lex might really want him.

Clark had spent the months since that conversation searching for clues, but he wasn't much closer to an answer. He had pursued his theory with a doggedness he thought would have impressed Chloe – if he'd told her about it. But for all of Chloe's flair for investigative reporting, there was something about this that he didn't want to share with anyone … something about Lex that he didn't want to share with anyone.

So Clark had worked his angle in private, watching and waiting for all the pieces to fall into place. But while he'd learned he could spend hours in Lex's company (and enjoy them immensely, despite journalistic integrity and the importance of an unbiased press), he never came away feeling quite sure. Lex might say something – often about destiny or greatness, two favorite themes of his – but there was always something cautious in the way he chose his words, as if he was deliberately ensuring there were at least two possible ways to interpret what he'd said. And Clark could catch him looking at him – like just now, as he sat pretending to do his Chemistry homework – and Lex would always smile and play it off as if his mind had been somewhere else.

Clark wanted to know, just once, where Lex's mind really was. One reliable statement, one quote on the record, one piece of irrefutable evidence – that was all he needed to lift his suspicions out of the realm of wild speculation and into the honest company of established fact. He didn't want this story to be relegated to the Wall of Weird, an oddball theory with nothing substantial behind it.

He wanted it to be true.

So maybe he had proven something after all. It wasn't the thing he'd wanted: he couldn't say with certainty that Lex wanted him. But, almost unintentionally, he'd made a clear case that he wanted Lex to.

And who was he to squash such a compelling story?

-

"Lex? You're far away again."

"Am I?" Lex let the laptop fall shut with a soft _click_. If he couldn't keep himself from staring then maybe the time had come to do what he did best … He paused for a moment to remember his Newton, his law of inertia. Lex was an irresistible force, not an immovable object; so why was he acting like one? Just like that he released his hold, and slipped into his most suggestive smile. "I guess my heart just isn't in financial reports tonight."

Clark slammed his textbook with significant energy. "Good, because mine isn't in Chemistry either. So what should we do?"

Lex had risen and moved to the bar; he put down the ice tongs now and made an expansive gesture with his graceful hands. "I'm a poor host – I didn't have anything entertaining planned for tonight. I never thought beyond you saying you needed a quiet place to study."

"I did … I do." Clark's smile was disarming. "I can never concentrate in the Talon – there's just too much going on there all the time. But here can be distracting too …"

"Oh?" Lex's voice curled at the corners, like his mouth. He was returning to the table now with a drink for each of them. "And what could you possibly find here to distract you?"

Clark could smell the strong aroma of Lex's scotch, but when he lifted his own tumbler to his lips, the familiar, innocent taste of root beer flooded his senses. It was, in some way, disappointing. "It's just too quiet, is all," he replied, wiping the foam from his upper lip with back of his hand. "I can hear myself think."

Lex sipped his scotch contemplatively and moved towards the windows. He gazed out across the grounds for a few moments, watching the ornamental garden steeping in shadows and weighing the delicious tension building between them with unchecked greed.

Clark had begun to think Lex wasn't going to reply. Then, unexpectedly, he said, "I know what you mean."

"What, no joke about hearing myself think?" Clark baited good-naturedly. "The echoes or the sound of the wind?"

"I'm sorry," Lex retorted, his eyebrows quirking wryly as he glanced back over his shoulder. "I didn't realize you were asking for abuse."

"No one dishes it out quite like you," Clark answered, trying again to emulate that double-edged tone of Lex's. It caught his own ear so easily when Lex used it on him ...

"Some other night, maybe." Lex turned back to look out over the darkening park, knowing that to give Clark his shoulder now would be all it took to draw him closer. "I'm feeling off my game."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing in particular. It's just been a rough week and the house felt lonely tonight. That's why I said I know about listening to yourself think; I was staring down the barrel of a very quiet evening before you called."

Clark left his books and his root beer behind to join Lex at the window. He considered placing a hand on his friend's shoulder; but at the last minute he faltered, knowing that if he touched Lex right now he would feel his hand trembling. Instead he just said, "I'm sorry, I didn't stop to think that you might want some privacy in your own house. I'm here too much, aren't I? You could tell me not to come over, I'd understand."

"Not at all," Lex replied, turning again and this time meeting Clark's gaze levelly. "I rarely want to be alone with my thoughts, and yours is the company I'd choose above all others. I was glad you asked to come tonight … glad to have you here with me."

They stood facing each other, intent on each other's eyes and probably a little closer than was strictly necessary. It was all Clark could do to keep himself from blushing. He didn't know how to do this: how to accept Lex's compliments, meaningful as they were, or how to turn them around towards his advantage. He felt a stab of selfishness to find himself thinking that way; maybe Lex didn't really want him after all. Maybe he was just imagining it. At any rate he had no right to try to hijack their conversation.

Finally he answered honestly. "Then so am I. But I'll still never understand why you enjoy my company. I'm hopelessly boring and I'll be lucky to get a C in Chemistry. That's if I don't blow up the whole lab first."

Lex laughed softly, low in his throat. Clark's modesty was really almost too much to believe sometimes; but he savored it anyway. It was probably selfish of him to take these honest, endearing traits of Clark's and glean such dark pleasure from them. He didn't much care, though; if selfishness was the only sin Clark ever inspired in him, he would count himself fortunate. "Your report card notwithstanding, Clark, you don't know your own power. You cheer me up where little else can; sometimes I think you're like a drug to me."

Opportunity rang in Clark's ears. He was a straight thinker, most comfortable in shades of black and white; and so he had been waiting months for a sign, proof that had never materialized. But Lex was so much more fluid, instinctively at home amongst shades of grey. So this could be just another of his carefully constructed remarks; it could mean no more than what it sounded like on the surface. Or it could be the closest thing to an admission he could ever expect Lex to make.

Lex was older, smarter, always in control. But none of that meant Clark had to sit around waiting any longer than he decided to.

And he decided he was done. "If I'm your drug," Clark said, his eyes suddenly fierce, "then you should take me."

The coiling tension that had been building in Lex's belly suddenly burst into illicit pleasure and he wondered if he'd accidentally slipped back into fantasy. But no, here was Clark standing close enough to touch, staring down at him with an expression that could not be misinterpreted. A moment ago he'd been watching, weaving, waiting for the perfect moment to strike … he'd never considered that Clark might make the first move. But he had, and all of Lex's careful strategies went up in spectacular flames. His hands flew to Clark's face and pulled their lips together in a motion that was swift and decisive.

Swift and decisive … this was the Lex Clark knew. Something deep inside him sounded in recognition, even as desire blotted out all other thoughts.

At first Lex did not try to compose himself; instead he allowed himself to experience the rushing loss of his self-control along with the tug of Clark's mouth and the taste of his skin. But eventually that first flare of delicious insanity passed and Lex relaxed his grip on Clark's hair. With reluctance he pulled away and murmured, "Tell me if this is right."

"Can't you tell?" Clark smiled, teasing, and pursued Lex's retreating mouth with his own enthusiastic one.

Lex moaned softly into the brazen ease of his kiss, but he needed to be sure. "Clark, I have to ask …"

"It's what we both want," Clark interrupted, his hands slipping down Lex's sides to settle possessively in the small of his back. "Isn't it?"

As his skin ignited under Clark's caress, Lex realized this was probably the first time anyone had ever asked him that question. What he wanted was easy to define; it all converged into one word, one syllable. Lex wanted Clark – to fill up all his senses, his nights, his bed. He wanted to be saturated with Clark's presence until he could hold no more, until his soul was burning and the love of him broke his heart.

It all sounded like more stuff of legends, though, so he didn't say these things out loud. While it was intoxicating to be asked what he wanted, there was still a part of him that cringed at Clark's ability to inspire him to dramatic speeches. And there would be plenty of opportunities – later – to play about with words.

Right now it was time for action.

"Yes," he said instead, and pulled Clark deeper into his arms, his mouth.


End file.
